Architect Gene Kaufman says hotel business is “surprisingly good”

Gene Kaufman, the founder of Gene Kaufman architects, is currently working on several new projects, including a Hyatt hotel in Union Square, a Marriott Courtyard at 35th Street in the old Atlantic Bank Building, a Holiday Inn on Delancey Street and a Holiday Inn Express in the West 40s. “The conventional wisdom was that the hotel industry would be back in 2013 but in New York, the market has already been back for quite some time,” he told The Real Deallast week.”The five-year plan happened in two years.” Kaufman, 51, has designed more than 60 hotels in the New York area over the last 10 years, many of them for the McSam Hotel Group. In an interview with the New York Times, Kaufman noted that “business is surprisingly good… We have maybe six or seven hotels that we started in the last 90 days.” [NYT]